6:11 p.m. - 2002-08-25
Athena Kills a Mouse
On our last night at Wells Avenue Athena killed a mouse.
We came home from a long day of wrestling with kitchen cabinets to find her on the bed, gazing lovingly at her prize. It was a big mouse, old enough to know better than to wander around near a cat.
It was barely breathing, and I was hoping it was just stunned. "Maybe if I put it outside it'll recover", I said to Bruce.
"Yeah, sometimes they just jump up and run away", he replied, in a not-very-convincing way.
So I took it outside, said a little St. Francis prayer and hoped that it would be gone when I went out the next morning, but no, there it was. I buried it under the spider lilies.
I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand I'm glad that Athena is doing what she is genetically programmed to do. I suppose I'm glad that we don't have to worry about mice getting into the food, or running across our faces in the middle of the night. On the other hand, Athena is just a bit too gleeful about it, a little too gung-ho. If she were a human being she'd be over in Afghanistan right now, rounding up terrorists in a not very pleasant way.
And Athena and I have always had our differences. Basically, she has never taken to me and never will. I was the one who dragged her indoors when I found her flea-ridden and pregnant and starving in our backyard in Jamaica Plain, and it was me who took her to the vet. She doesn't associate me will being rescued, but with fear and discomfort.
She loves Bruce, though. He's the maypole she does her dance around, and he can do nothing wrong as far as she's concerned. Even when she was still feral she would always poke her head out of the closet for Bruce.
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